


A Deeper Cut

by missmungoe



Category: One Piece
Genre: ...sort of, Courtship, F/M, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-08 23:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11656827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmungoe/pseuds/missmungoe
Summary: He comes across it by accident — the sword.Of course, nothing is ever accidental when it comes to her.





	A Deeper Cut

**Author's Note:**

> I've always liked these two, and since I've been doing flower prompts over on tumblr and got one for them, I thought I might take a shot at writing them! Prompt asked for "gladiolus" (you pierce my heart) and "witch hazel" (a spell).

He thinks about her more than he should.

It comes in fits and bursts, in the beginning. He finds it in the angle of his blade (Wado, pale and slender; sometimes in Kitetsu, never in Shusui), the curved tip catching the sun – remembers it glinting off her glasses, pushed up her nose with that stubborn defiance, pursing her mouth.

He finds it in the white crest of a wave swelling against the hull, the reverent arch of her fingers sweeping across a polished blade, admiring; sword-scars and nicks and callouses dotting the rise of her knuckles, silver on the pearl of her skin. It’s there when he closes his eyes between breaths, seeking  _peace_ – the thought of her. Persistent, hounding him without mercy, but then the real thing wouldn’t do anything less, so he doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

Drinking makes it easier to bear – the thinking-about-her, and the trying-not-to-think-about-her. But drinking only helps for a little while, until he’s back at it again, and his crew gives him hell on a regular basis for his sense of direction, but his thoughts, at least, always seem to find their way back to her. It’s an irony that smacks of a particularly bad hand, dealt him in a game he never even meant to enter.

A cut would have been kinder, Zoro thinks. He has his share of scars – bears them proudly, some of them trophies, some of them reminders, but all of them visible. But hers…isn’t. It sits under his skin, like an itch but not really, because he can’t reach it, and nothing really  _helps,_  not drinking or relentless training. Even sleeping betrays him, because he’ll wake up, and there she’ll be, sometimes his first thought, sometimes his second. But it doesn’t matter which, really, because no matter what he’s doing she’s always  _there._

 

—

 

They have a habit of meeting by accident, of bumping into each other, seeming always drawn together by a sea that, almost by definition, doesn’t make it easy to find anyone, let alone the same person more than once.

They’ve stopped at an island, a few hours of shore leave on their hands while the log pose sets, and the rest are off seeking their usual haunts, Usopp’s glib “Oi, someone should keep an eye on Zoro” drifting up to the deck from the docks below, and then it’s anyone’s guess just why they’re falling over themselves laughing – their usual humour at the expense of his sense of direction, or the unintentional eye pun.

Usopp goes in the water, and their devil fruit users are subjected to a glare that only has Luffy laughing harder, and with a twitch in his cheek, Zoro leaves them, grumbling all the way into the town, a sprawling cluster of rust-red buildings climbing a swelling hill dipping its port into a blue-green sea.

He’s taken a single step into the first market square when he sees her, waiting at a street corner, glasses pushed up to her brow and her eyes trained on a sheet of paper in her hands.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The words slip under his breath, under the din and the milling crowd, but he doesn’t bother trying to look for his surprise that he’s found her,  _here_ , knowing it’s as likely as anywhere.

Her attention is on the paper in her hands, the slant of her brow dipping, her glasses teetering precariously, like they want to slip down her nose. A soldier’s stillness in her calm, dignified grace, and it’s incongruous, for how laughably clumsy he knows she can be. And it’s not the only contrast, her whole person a living contradiction of stark military practicality and feminine frippery.

Kuina had been different. Hard. Boyish. All practicality.

He looks at the lace-trimmed sleeves of her blouse, and the soft, floral pattern climbing up the dipping collar towards her throat. Nothing hard or boyish about that.

He doesn’t let himself think about when he stopped seeing her as an echo. It’s difficult now even if he concentrates, given the space she’s made for herself in his head, with all her contradictions, and he finds the thought of her in so many things, except the one that had once defined her in his mind.

As though sensing his eyes on her, she lifts her chin, and he’s steered down a nearby side-street before she has the chance to see him, and then another before he’s had the chance to think about where he’s going, needing only to put as much distance as he can between them, even as the itch rises, creeps up under his skin, and he’s turned down a third street before he realises that he has no idea where he is.

But she’s not there, and if he can just avoid her long enough for the pose to set, it doesn’t matter where  _he_  is.

There’s a weapon’s shop sitting at the corner of the street right ahead of him; a small, inconspicuous space, the storefront a single window bearing a faded sale’s sign that looks to have been there forever. Not a place likely to attract a lot of customers, but he has time to kill, and so he steps inside.

The proprietor offers him a perfunctory once-over when he steps across the threshold, gaze lingering a moment longer on the swords on his hip, before a nod of approval sees him idling by the shelves, lined with a number of blades of unremarkable make and origin. But then he’s never been picky about that sort of thing.

He doesn’t know what it is that does it, drawing his attention to a single sword, in a pile of many. But there’s something, an inkling of recognition that feels suddenly familiar, akin to that itch, the thing that’s hers, that’s under his skin, seeming to say  _here. here i am._

There’s nothing about it that suggests it’s anything special, the sheath of simple make and without ornamentation, meant to be practical more than anything else, and the hilt wrapped with a ragged piece of cloth. But he’s reaching for it before he can think too much about it, sliding it out of its sheath, the cloth falling away–

He might not be a sword geek, but he  _knows_  – feels it, in his bones, in his whole body – that this blade has a name. That it’s more than its simple trappings suggest.

He considers the weight of it in his hand, and the polished blade, freed of the sheath. The curved silver collar with its honeycomb pattern, and the wrappings around the handle, indigo blue edged with red.

She’d like it, he thinks. It’s the very first thought that finds him, after the realisation that the sword is more than it pretends to be.

He hates that he thinks it, but there it is, like that itch that he can’t reach, and he knows that it won’t let him go now that he’s thought it. Not unless he does something about it.

 _Can’t believe I’m doing this._  A glance over his shoulder finds the proprietor observing him, no accusation but a half-committed salesman’s detached interest in his gaze.

Zoro slides the blade back in its sheath, and asks, “How much?”

He’s given a price. It’s moderately obscene, given the nature of the sword, and so he can’t really complain. He doubts the proprietor knows what he’s selling; doubts he cares, from the disinterested wave of his hand.

But he doesn’t have a single coin on him, and he’s about to forfeit the whole thing when he lifts his eye to the window overlooking the street outside.

The devil woman is standing there, watching him with that  _smile_ , and Zoro knows his fate is sealed even before she’s fished her money-purse from her pocket.

_Damn it._

“Always a pleasure doing business with you, Zoro,” Nami coos later, when the transaction is done and they’re stepping out of the shop and into the cramped market square sprawling at its doorstep, one of the town’s many. The sun is setting, bleeding red across an orange sky, and it’ll be time for them to depart soon, but Nami doesn’t seem to be in a hurry.

Zoro glares, but it slides right off her. “Sure you wouldn’t rather want my soul instead?”

She laughs. “Silly,” she says. “Souls don’t collect interest.”

A mutter idles under his breath, and she looks at him then, money-purse tucked back in her pocket, but by the look on her face, their personal transaction is far from done.

“Hey,” he says, before she can open her mouth to ask the questions her smile doesn’t even bother hiding. “Do you have a pen and paper on you?”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and he can see the way  _intrigue_  lights up her eyes, not unlike the way the prospect of treasure does. But she roots around in her bag and hands it over, and doesn’t ask. At least not about the pen and paper.

She eyes the sword, tucked under his arm. “I didn’t know you were looking for a new sword,” she says, casually.

He hears from the inflection – the suspiciously even enunciation of the words, the whole remark carefully curious, no more than a friend’s casual interest – that it’s a question that seeks, hoping to find something. No, _knowing_  that it will, if it prods at the right places, like a pickpocket’s fingers searching a purse for loose strings to pull.

And so, “I’m not,” he says, and leaves it at that.

The look she gives him tells him plainly it’s not the last he’ll hear about it, but she leaves him be, a new target selected already before she’s sauntered off, the jingle of her purse chiming with her steps as she makes for the shop on the other side of the market. Zoro spares a passing thought of sympathy to whoever owns it.

Then he retreats, before she changes her mind and really does come back for his soul.

The new swords rests, light in his grip as he crosses the small square, to take a seat by the fountain trickling water into the pale yellow stones. He places it over his lap, the worn sheath looking up at him, and he tries not to think about the blade underneath; the polished gleam of the metal and the engravings by the hilt. Sleek dignity, and just a little bit feminine flair (and he’s never found the thought of her as strongly in any of his own blades, not even Wado).

He pulls out the pen and paper, and stares down at it. Tries not to think about the sword, and the itch.

(it doesn’t work for long, of course, given what he’s about to write, but he can be persistent too, and like her, he never stops trying)

The first note goes like this:  _Copycat. Here’s one for your collection._

He scraps it, and the second goes a little differently:  _Captain. This is for you._

The second note crumbles, and follows its companion in the heap by his feet. He tries a third time. A fourth. A fifth.

The final note ends up looking like this:

_Glasses,_

_Don’t cut yourself._

He scribbles the symbol for “sword” at the bottom. If she doesn’t get it, it’s not the end of the world.

A second after thinking it, he hesitates, and very nearly signs his full name.

He thinks the better of it a moment later, and tucks the folded note into the sheath before he can talk himself out of the whole damn venture.

He finds the local marine base (over an hour later, after wandering the streets, the sun having sunk into the sea, and the others are probably looking for him, but they can wait a little longer, for that pun earlier). He walks through the front door, a casual “Yo” offered to the startled marine sitting at the front desk, before he drops the sword with the attached note onto his stack of documents. “The captain with the glasses. Make sure this gets to her,” he says to the gaping officer, who by this time has recognised him, before turning around and striding back out.

It’s a good two minutes before the alarm shrieks out across the town, but by that time, he’s already lost.

 

—

 

She finds him, several weeks later.

He doesn’t know how, but then there’s that thing they have, the strange pull that wants to be accidental but that doesn’t quite manage to be. And it’s a new island and a new town, and he’s had less than an hour to get lost when she’s suddenly striding towards him from across a busy square, and with enough  _intent_ in her steps that for a second, Zoro thinks she’s about to attack him.

But, “This!” she shouts, thrusting the sword in his face, still in its ugly, worn sheath, and he’s so surprised he doesn’t even reach for his own.

“What?” he snaps, when all she does is proffer the blade, as though expecting him to make sense of the gesture, and her anger, when he doesn’t understand either.

Her brows draw together sharply above the rims of her glasses, and she looks  _furious._  “Why did you give me this?” she asks. Anger makes a breathless shiver of her voice. Regrettably, it shoots straight into his gut.

But – “Wait, you’re pissed because I  _gave_ you the sword?”

Colour rises, high in her cheeks. “Why!?”

He’s gaping now. “First you give me grief because I won’t give you any of  _my_ swords, but when I come across this one and leave it for you, I’m  _still_  doing something wrong?!”

“You haven’t answered  _why_!” she shrieks. They’ve attracted something of an audience now, but it’s hard to focus on that when she’s standing so close he can feel her breathing, her heartbeat, and there’s too much of her, all of her _too close_ , her glasses slipping down her nose, seeming to beg a hand to push them back up, and before he can stop himself –

“I thought you’d like it, okay!? Shit, what the hell do you  _want_ from me?”

Her mouth snaps shut. Opens. Shuts again. She looks at him, and  _huffs._ There’s a second Zoro thinks she might hit him. Or scream in his face.

She kisses him.

One hand still wrapped around the sheathed blade, she throws her arm around his neck, the other gripping his jaw, pulling him down, and then she’s  _kissing_ him, nose pressed against his, her glasses pushed up and her mouth soft, taking and giving like she can’t decide which she’d rather do, and he’s so surprised that for a moment all he does it stand there.

She’s pulled back before she’s even given him a chance to respond, a breath rushing out of her when she breaks the contact, staggering back a step. And her cheeks are so red he can’t tell if she’s blushing or if she’s about to start shouting again.

But – the itch, Zoro realises, dragging in a starved breath in tandem with the one she let go, is nowhere to be found. Or, it’s different now, not beyond reach, but just within. Her spell lifts, reshapes like the thought of her in his mind, leaving something he actually knows what to do with. He knows what he  _wants_  to do.

He’s still hard pressed to decide if she’s breathless from fury or something quite different, or maybe it’s some potent combination of both that does it, but Tashigi looks at him, her voice rising up her chest, eyes bright and accusing behind her glasses as her lips part, shaping a word he can already predict, his eyes having fixed on her mouth the second she pulled it from his, “ _You–_ ”

Zoro shoves his hand into her hair, and kisses her before she can decide just what it is she wants to name him.

 


End file.
